Mooch in Jive

Ballroom Blitz #137

Mooch in Jive - Dec 19, 2024

Transcript

Ian: Hey, boys and girls from the interwebs. My name is Ian

Lindsey: and my name is Lindsey.

Ian: Welcome back to

Ian & Lindsey: Ballroom Blitz.

Ian: Welcome Blitzers. Welcome back to Ballroom Blitz. Today we are hitting up the Jive with a move that doesn't sound as active, but it really can be. It's called The Mooch.

[Demonstration without music]

Ian: I really love this move on a busy floor when the music is fast. You have a lot of variation in this move. You can dress it up or down. You can let go. You can keep hold. You can take it easy. You can take it faster if you want to. So it has a lot of variability.

We're going to give you the base model for this one. So you might look at it and think it's a little vanilla. But start there because you've got a lot of options once you get the basic pattern down pat and usually people will do more than one Mooch at a time. So you might get halves a full one one and a half and then there's different exits that you can add on depending on where you want to get off the Mooch ride. So, let's get into it. The steps for the lead and follow are almost the same with a little bit of, mirror ability and we'll take that into account; but, let's go.

Ian: So we're going to demonstrate this together because it does show the mirror ability and some of the different options and things much easier than if we did it one at a time. The first step in, doing the Mooch is really leading the Mooch and it's quite unique in that you still start with a back replace leads, but you are going to give enough of a push that you're actually going to get your follow past the fallaway position. Oh really, I should say to they usually will Fallaway position, because they're going to turn a quarter, but you are going to turn yourself past your usual Fallaway position.

So instead of moving one eighth, you are going to have to let go because you yourself are turning a quarter, so you are quite side by side in a left or right side position, depending on which side you end up on. So if we're starting from our, Fallaway Rock, we're going to give a little bit of an extra push and turn a little bit further back, that's our back, and now as we replace, we retain this side by side position. Here this is this hold is optional, you can let go, I don't know of any standard sort of beginner book figures that have this lead. So unless you're doing custom open figures, in which case you probably know this already. If you let go in this position, your partner's going to know what you're doing; if they've done the Mooch.

So once we get to here and we've done our Back-Replace that gets us on our outside foot. Now the basic version takes this all quite slowly. There's no chassis timing. So you get to do it one at a time. It's still quite swift because it's Jive. But what we're going to do is kick on the outside foot, Kick, and of course we say “kick”, it's not a big footy kick. You're going to flick from the knee, point the toe down, so it's nice and compact. So we Flick, put it down, then we Flick the inside foot, put it down. Now we are going to take a Back-Replace no turn on this one. But as we take our Chasse we're going to turn 180 degrees Quick-a-Quick, and now we're going to repeat all of what we have just done. But it has now swapped sides of our body because we've changed the direction, but it's the same pattern. Back-Replace, Flick outside down, Flick inside down, Back-Replace, and when we Chasse here, if you're doing just one whole Mooch you're going to Chasse a quarter and regain your closed position.

Ian: As I said before, often times people will do these in halves, so you might get one and a half and there's different exits for that. But a full Mooch is both sides. So if we go through that slowly but altogether it will look something like Back-Replace, Flick-down, Flick-down, Back-Replace Chasse-change-sides, Back-Replace, Flick-down, Flick-down Back-Replace, catch your partner.

Now, the reason I said in the intro that I love this move because you can dance at fast or slow, I said something like that is that even though it looks like you've got lots of steps, and obviously we think Jive is horrendously fast sometimes, you'll notice there aren't actually many Chasses. So, if the music gets quite quick you can take a little bit of a break because we have our Back-Replace, and these two flicks, they're the same pace as a Back-Replace. Flick. Flick. Then another Back-Repalce. So you've actually got six steps in a row without your Jive Chasse, which is often where people sometimes get a little bit lost and they get a little bit overwhelmed if the music's a bit quick.

Now of course, if the music is slow or you want to upgrade, then there are other things that you can do instead of a straight flick and flick, you can do Flick-Crosses and Boppy-Hops, and there's a range of different, options that you can investigate there to give you the Chasse, if you want that Jive timing or you want a little bit of extra oomph. But if the music's going, going like the clappers and you're a little bit tired because it's towards the end of the night, you really can slow down with this one. Both sides, nice and easy flicks. You can even get a little bit lazy. You're not going to impact your partner, so you can really tone it down a little bit, take a little bit of a breather and then come back together.

Ian: Now, if you ever look up this move, it does look horrendously long. Because if you took all of that and wrote it down, it's about 22 steps. But remember the amount of repetition and it's actually a lot easier than it sometimes first appeared. So it's really worth putting in the effort to slow it down, then you get a nice base and you can raise it back up if you want to start raising the roof with your Mooch.

Now, we have alluded to the fact that sometimes people will do half a mooch. That's totally fine. Instead of Chasse-ing and changing sides, people will Chasse and often then go into the back half of a different figure. We will leave a link, in the description to I believe we have blitzed the Fallaway Throwaway, and it's really easy to move from the midway point of your Mooch, instead of Chasse-ing changing sides, you can Chasse move into steps three to eight, so the double Chasse of the Fallaway Throwaway. You can also do this with your Change of Place, and this is a common thing in a lot of your Jive figures, where we sort of cut out the Back-Replace of one and stick the Chasse portion, the Chasse ending of that figure onto the end of a different figure and sort of glue them together, and the mooch is a really good one to do that. So if you can't remember the whole thing or if you're practicing and you find getting into that closed position a little bit challenging, or maybe you're over it and you want something different, do half a mooch or one and a half mooch, stick your hand up and then move through into a different exit.

Try it, give it a go, we'll leave the links in the description to the relative, figures, and you can chop and change them and if you want a specific video on how to do that, you'll have to leave a comment below.

[Demonstration with music]

Ian: And there you have it guys and girls, Jivers all around the world, that is the basic version of the Mooch. Cut it up as you like, try the Flick-Crosses and Boppy-hops. They should be relatively easy to find if you want to upgrade your Mooch, and then of course, try adding whatever variations you would like. It's really good for just giving it a go and seeing what pops out, really. Of course, you never get better at it if you don't try it on the floor. So find yourself a partner, find yourself a social, get out there, have some fun, try it out, let us know how you go and we will see you in the next one.

Ian: Well, that's it for this Blitz boys and girls, don't forget to like,

Lindsey: comment,

Ian: share,

Lindsey: and subscribe.

Ian: See you next time.

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